Windows Thin Clients - Worth Making the Switch? 128
Brendtron 5000 asks: "I work in the IT department of a major Canadian university. I've been given the task of investigating the pros/cons and costs associated with switching from Windows desktop machines to some kind of thin client solution. Both student lab and administrative machines are up for possible replacement. At first blush it seems that the cost savings will be considerable, given that thin clients are much cheaper and easier to maintain than a user controlled desktop machine. What were your experiences with switching to/managing thin client environments? Have the users been happy with thin clients? Did the cost savings materialize as expected?"
Don't Do It!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes, but not anymore (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is to say, that Microsoft wouldn't license Windows anymore and "offered" to license Citrix's stuff from them. Pull your head out and wake up, will you? Citrix didn't have a choice in the matter. Their choice was to go along with Microsoft's plans or close down their business.
Citrix made a companion product that extended the original
The "original" was Citrix WinFrame. It was inexpensive (what we're talking about here) and it worked. Microsoft came in and ensured that you had to pay them a boatload of money just to use their crappy rip-off of Citrix's technology. Then if you want it to actually work, you have to pay Citrix gobs of money on top of that. There's absolutely no way that's economical in comparison to PCs.
So if you want to "blame" anyone, should you not be blaming Citrix for essential "selling out"?
I "blame" Microsoft for shafting Citrix, then forcing the price per user to triple. My company had payed for a Citrix WinFrame license with ~20 (IIRC) concurrent connection licenses included. We then bought another 20 licenses to come up with ~40 concurrent connection licenses.
With Terminal Server we were staring down the barrel an expensive TS acquisition, PLUS a fee for each user (instead of connections), PLUS a Windows NT Desktop license for each thin client. If we wanted Citrix on top of that, we'd be looking at huge costs in addition to the incredible ones we'd already payed Microsoft.
Now the current company I work for uses TS 2003 for a few remote applications. There's simply no way they've found to make these systems economical. They're supported only because they're necessary, not because they're cheaper than desktops.
To put it simply, Microsoft f**ked up the market, and did so intentionally. So get that rosy image of Microsoft out of your head. It's nothing more than a lie. You may have bought into it, but those of us who were *there* when Microsoft screwed over the market know the truth.